Nuance Launches a Multi-Channel PVA, Combining Nina and VirtuOZ

Nuance has launched a new version of its virtual assistant Nina(TM) – a service that benefits from the company’s stepped up investment in research and development surrounding Natural Language Processing, with an assist from the acquisition of VirtuOZ in January. Claiming over a thousand speech scientists and natural language specialists operating in a group managed by Distinguished Scientist Ron Kaplan, Nuance has upped the stakes for the handful of companies that are making conversational user interfaces to support self-service and assisted self service across mobile and Web-based interactions. Let’s not forget that the company is also leveraging a long-term cross-licensing agreement with the folks at IBM who brought the world Watson to support “Deep Question Answering,” which is starting to make its presence known among healthcare providers and their patients.

Viewing these activities through the lens of time, you can see that Nuance and IBM anticipated increased public acceptance of speech-enabled Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs) close to three years ago. And, as this press release regarding anticipated acceptance in the healthcare domain indicates, it is positioned to “go vertical” in response to the fact that, in many instances, customers actually prefer to interact with an automated system that anticipates and understands their needs, requirements and basic intent. As this infographic shows, 80% of the 1,000 physicians surveyed see VPAs having a dramatic effect on healthcare in the next five years.

That said, it is important to note that the new, multi-channel Nina is a horizontal offering. It (she?) is designed to provide a consistent virtual assistant experience, regardless of whether the conversation is held through a speech-enabled IVR or through a Web site and use cases are expected to include mobile phones, where Nuance will add voice biometric authentication to support a highly secure personal virtual assistant. It is also integrating IVR, Web chat and text-based interaction to the existing Nina product. Now, thanks to the integration of VirtuOZ, Nuance is adding human-like interaction through Web sites, placing emphasis on consistently accurate and personal responses.

Today’s announcement includes the introduction of “Nina Agent” – which includes connectivity to enterprise CRM systems, including intelligent routing to live agents when appropriate in the course of a conversation. “Nina IQ Studio” is a “Rapid Design Environment” to enable enterprise personnel or third parties to build and deploy Web-based agents relatively quickly and efficiently. It also marks the introduction of a new Nuance NLU (Natural Language Understanding) Engine, which means that every instantiation will benefit from the system’s ability to “learn” from each interaction and transaction. It is also able to treat information in existing knowledge management systems and CRM systems as raw material for tailoring the conversations with Nina-based agents.

Nuance characterizes the new Nina as the “first complete multi-channel virtual assistant,” meaning it combines the ability to assist with “agent intelligence.” Its all-encompassing approach is a defining moment for the VPA community. Nina started out as an alternative to Apple’s Siri as a virtual assistant for smartphones. In addition to Apple, which is likely to continue to introduce flavors of its assistant to improve search, navigation, media control and e-commerce activities in cars and “connected homes,” you’ll find a number of mobile agents in the wild. Vlingo (which has been purchased by Nuance), Maluuba, SpeakToIt and many others will emerge in this territory. And while it does not claim to be a “virtual assistant,” GoogleNow, when activated through Google Talk offers mobile users a way to use what Angel’s CEO (now a subsidiary of Genesys) Dave Rennyson calls a “sparse dialog model” to take control of search and navigate life’s options through mobile phones. Angel’s Lexee, under the aegis of Genesys, will emerge as an interesting competitor to Nina. Both will be competing for business from the forward-looking companies whose executives recognize that virtual assistants (morphing into virtual advisors) have an important part to play in fulfilling the needs of the growing number of customers who initiate their contact via a mobile browser, text or a call from a smartphone.

Approximately 75% of VirtuOZ customers are also Nuance customers. That should be a good litmus test regarding commitment to supporting high-quality self-service or assisted self-service. We counted over sixteen providers of enterprise-based virtual assistants who, like VirtuOZ were leveraging NLU and knowledge management. NextIT, IntelliResponse, Creative Virtual, Artificial Solutions and a handful of others have made various levels of inroads into customer care Web sites. If front-ending live agents is a priority, both Interactions Inc. and [24]7 Inc. are staking out their rightful turf in the multi-channel customer care domain.

The introduction of Nina Multichannel transforms virtual assistants into ubiquitous helpers that, like “always on” customers, are everywhere at once. They are on mobile devices, on the Web and inside the contact center. Plus they are well-positioned to help take control of cars, consumer electronics and kitchen devices. For people who have wondered whether the future would bear a greater resemblance to The Jetsons or Star Trek, we’re getting our answers now. The two visions are not mutually exclusive.

If Nuance has such a strong belief in Nina, it would seem like a priority would be to use it for their own Customer Support Line (800-654-1187) which continues as it has been reported for a few years – a disaster for the callers! A poorly implemented DTMF IVR. Tells you to go to the Nuance website. Call may be recorded message played inappropriately. Then loops endlessly if you don’t respond. If you press 0, it is ignored and the message cycles to the beginning. If you decide to talk to an agent, you invariably reach one with a heavy accent that is difficult to understand. If you call after hours, the system announces that you should call back during working hours and hangs up. And these are the folks that claim to be the experts in providing high quality customer service?

Nuance does not have any answer for the biggest challenge which is that the vast majority of callers dislike self-service. Instead, they are proposing solutions like Nina that ignore this basic problem and are likely to create many others. The announced Nina IVR solution (which is ignored in your review) is simply Nuance Call Steering, which provides a very limited call routing solution with a massive implementation price tag. Superior natural language solutions exist at a fraction of the price of the Nuance solution
I regularly deal with 2 telephone companies, 5 utility companies, 3 insurance companies, 3 banks, a cableTV company, numerous healthcare providers, 2 heating oil companies, plus numerous local, state and federal government agencies. I assume that I’m going to need a separate Nina app for each of them to achieve any of the consistency of interface that is discussed. Do we seriously expect consumers to manage 2 dozen (or more) Nina Apps?
Nuance’s emphasis of the importance of voice authentication (VA) in mobile appears to be misplaced. Traction outside of mobile has been insignificant. With mobile, other competitive authentication technologies such as fingerprints and facial recognition exist which don’t carry the baggage that speech authentication carries. Admittedly – the concern about mobile security could drive speech into multi-factor authentication (MFA) requirements. On the other hand, Wi-Fi hotspots are clearly security weak spots and we don’t see much concern by the mobile users about using them.
The use of speech in mobile is a huge opportunity. It must, however, be done in a careful and intelligent fashion, selecting applications in which speech has a solid benefit/advantage. If an alternate modality exists, speech will invariably lose. Do a survey about using speech in mobile of the young folks and see what you get. I’m sure that you will find the support for speech use to be underwhelming. It’s apparent to me that Nuance is not the company to drive this. The industry would be better served if they focused on improving the base speech technologies and got out of the application business, which they are not very good at. Their historical leadership (or more appropriately – lack of leadership) in the call center self-service area has been a major contributor to the basic industry problem – callers dislike IVR! It would be sad to see Nuance poison the mobile space as well.
Rather than The Jetsons or Star Trek, I would suggest that The Flintstones is a more likely model of what Nuance Nina will help create.

Walt: To the contrary, I’ve been observing growing interest in self-service for all of the routine queries and e-commerce activities that people undertake every day. Our research has shown that people go to Web based search engines, company web sites and, increasingly turn to smartphones (either through browsers or apps) as a first step in shopping or seeking customer support. As you and I both know, they initiate a phone call when they have failed to resolve their issues through other means. They get frustrated with IVR systems (both DTMF and speech-enabled) because they perceive them to be in the way of getting in touch with a human being who will work with them to resolve issues quickly.

But something wonderful has been happening – thanks to efforts Google, IBM/Nuance, NICE Systems and dozens of entrepreneurial firms like Interactions Corp and [24]7 Inc. – who are transforming a stew of customer queries, FAQs, “best answers” from agents, hours of conversations between customers a support representatives into the bases for better self-service. In this context I see “self-service” as customer-directed fulfillment. Much of it is automate and, when it is conducted over the so-called “voice-channel” there’s an indicated preference for dealing with a human being or, more recently, a human-like assistant or advisor. I would argue that the companies mentioned above are doing their best to make phone-based self-service feel more human, and perhaps humane. When it is done well, it’s a pleasing experience for callers.

Dan: I totally agree with your observation that users go to web self-service as their 1st step in attempting to resolve a customer service issue. In fact, solid research data http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~rtelang/Web-portal.pdf (not the data from phony vendor surveys) has shown that users will go to web self-service for trivial issues that they would not bother to call about. What then occurs is that they then see other information on the website which alarms them and their next step is to make a call to the call center to talk to a human. Note that the massive increase in the use of web self-service is actually causing a massive increase in calls that are going to the call center. These additional callers are looking for a human to talk to. Unless the industry comes up with a natural language solution self-service solution that meets the needs of these callers, the call center will require a lot more CSRs (and expense) to handle these additional calls.
Of the companies that you reference, that are addressing the challenge of providing a true NL caller interface for IVR applications, the only one that I would agree with you on is Interactions. http://www.interactions.net I’ve called the customer service lines of a number of their customers and concluded that, yes indeed, they are providing a true NL experience. Neither Google, IBM or Nice are in the IVR business, so I’m not certain why you would single them out as being significant contributors to NL IVR. If you want to include companies that are dealing with artificial intelligence (AI) and its contribution to NL, then your list should be expanded by the thousands. Talking about personalization/caller adaptation (like 24/7 does) is fine, but it’s not the same as actually implementing a quality NL IVR solution. Can you point me to a 24/7 customer that is using a NL IVR solution? I’ve searched and come up empty-handed.
As for Nuance (Nina), which is what I thought the discussion was all about, they have made it quite clear that the only solution that they are offering to attempt to address the NL IVR challenge is Nina IVR, which is the Nuance Call Steering product, which is based on SLM technology. Aside from being notoriously expensive to implement/support, it is a quite limited NL IVR solution. It’s for steering calls to a limited number of destinations. As I pointed out in my previous comment, Nuance’s own customer service line is implemented as a crude, directed-dialog IVR.
I’m encouraged that the call centers will understand the need for a quality NL IVR solution when they fully understand what is causing the increase in their call volume. I would suspect that the IVR suppliers will ultimately understand this and meet the need for a quality NL IVR solution. At the present time, Interactions appears to be one of the few suppliers that is prepared to meet this need.

Walt: In case folks missed it, your point that an academic study has shown that Web-based self-service increases the number of calls to contact centers cannot be emphasized enough. It is the truth and it is bound to continue for years to come. But there is a category of speech-enabled virtual assistant that is independent of an IVR or call steering system that the Web-or-Contact Center/Web-and-Contact Center will miss. I think that Nuance (with IBM), Google (internal) and Microsoft (ineternal) are making great strides in defining “natural interfaces” to resources that amount to care or self-service. I also put [24]7 customer (as well as Interactions) in that category.

Dan: Another important point re the increase in call center calls that are a result of web self-service failing is that these callers are looking to talk to a human. They’ve already tried self-service and it failed for them. They are convinced that nothing less than a human will do. When they encounter a typical directed-dialog IVR, they will immediately zero-out to a human. Only a high quality NL interface will have any success with these callers. Unfortunately, very few IVR solutions are currently addressing this challenge.
I’m interested in learning more about this “category of speech-enabled virtual assistant that is independent of an IVR or call steering system that the Web-or-Contact Center/Web-and-Contact Center will miss.” What is this category? Who are these users? Are they the ones that Nuance’s Nina is targeting? Maybe I don’t understand Nina properly.